Business Relationship Coaching

For Business Partners and Founders

My experience as a business founder and Psychotherapist for over 20 years, I understand the challenges and complications of working with others. Often in business partnerships, it may be difficult to manage roles and expectations within the organization. As your coach, I will meet with you to assess the environment, objectively address conflict, teach you my unique brand of communication tools and implement any necessary changes.

Why I am uniquely qualified to help you: I have the training and skills to approach relationship issues from a deeper understanding than many other coaches with my psychotherapy background.

Keep Your Business Thriving Relationship problems between business partners are a big reason why companies don’t succeed. Partners often bring unique strengths to the business. Trouble can start when these differences go from feeling complementary to feeling like liabilities. The way you and your business partners interact creates the culture of your business. Your struggles, conflicts, cooperation and compromises don’t just affect the partners, but also affect your staff—from your admin to your sales force—as well as your relationships with clients. Tension at ‘home’ means tension in the field, and that can impact your bottom line.

If you need help managing and negotiating difficult conversations, communicating as an effective leader or managing and leading your team, I can help you. As a psychotherapist for over twenty-five years, my expertise allows me to quickly hone is on the root issues of your challenges and conflicts, which allows for implementation of solutions and quick transformation. The reality is you spend more time awake and engaged with your business partner than you do with your partner or spouse. The constancy and intensity of that relationship can present issues, conflicts and obstacles every bit as complicated as those found in a romantic relationship. It might seem unorthodox at first, but ‘couples counseling’ for business partners and founders is exactly what you and your partner need to bring your business to the next level. I help partners work on the trust and communication necessary to function well together and to ensure your company is reaching it’s potential.

What People Are Saying

Dori worked with me and my business partner of 31 years to help us sort out dissolving the business, who was also a friend of 39 years. My partner wanted to leave the business, and we were fighting about how to split, while still maintaining our friendship. By the time we met with Dori, we were on the verge of hiring attorneys to negotiate terms, our business was in danger of self-destructing because morale was so low, and our friendship was in jeopardy. After two months of working with Dori, we didn’t need to go through litigation, and saved ourselves about $50,000. Dori helped us work out a way to break up the business partnership that worked for everyone. Morale increased, sales went back up and our friendship was in great shape! Incredibly, Dori helped save us $300,000 in sales and attorney’s fees and saved a 39-year friendship.

Dr. David Hovey, PsyD, Greater Hartford Counseling Center

I had one major block for, well, most of my adult life. Dori helped me explore and address it. She identified and explained it to me in a way no one else ever has. The simple exercise she guided me through helped me finally overcome something that literally has consumed my thoughts and actions in negative ways for as long as I can remember. Now my business and life have taken off in new, exciting ways I couldn’t have imagined. She knows her stuff, and she knows how to apply it to the real-world situations that hold business executives like me back.”

Bob Graham CEO, Serious Soft Skills LLC Baltimore, MD

Dr. Dori Gatter is wonderful! She helped me and my cofounder figure out the vast majority of root issues we’ve had. We started out in a rough patch, and now we have a functional relationship again. She has been the catalyst for generating not just a lot of financial value to us, but also personal and emotional value. I would strongly recommend her to any cofounders or couples that need to understand each other more.

J. Chang, Co-Founder

Dr. Dori is a seasoned pro. I got the sense she has seen it all. Through our work together I learned there’s a big difference between a coach or therapist who has been working with people for 20+ years and someone new to the practice. When we reached out to her, we were at a critical point of conflict with our founding team. We needed someone who could drop in quickly, read our situation correctly and provide tools we could put into effect immediately. I was impressed with how effective Dori’s coaching was, given the short amount of time she had with us. I Highly recommend her!

JP, Co-Founder

We started working with Dr. Dori Gatter because of the stress of our dual roles as co-founder and as couple. Although it has certain benefits to start a company with your partner, the distinct challenges are going beyond normal co-founder issues. Being a couple and starting your own company means that you spend almost 24h together and that you never really leave work. The major problem with this, we, as a couple faced is that we stopped spending personal time together and just worked. Also, the stress increased as we entered into the next phase of our startup. As a result, our relationship deteriorated and we were not ideal co-founders and business partners any longer. We were on the brink of ending the private relationship and continue just as co-founders and not sure how that would have worked out for the life of the company. This was when we started to work with Dori. We both enjoy working with her because of her talent to bring our unique personalities and work-related roles together without any of us having “to give in”. My co-founder and are very different types of people and deal with stress in opposite and sometimes opposing ways. With Dori’s help, we learned to understand each other but more importantly we learned to understand ourselves. Dori taught us how to listen to our needs and how to express them. Based on really effective exercises Dori gave us, communication at work and at home vastly improved. The stress from running a startup is still present but we can deal with this much better now and as a team. What I value the most in the work with Dori is that she is able to relate to me on an emotional level, the way I understand best, and immediately switch to the more intellectual way to address my partner, which works for him best. She then creates a common language for the two of us where we can talk, listen and be understood. I am sure that without working with Dori our relationship and our business wouldn’t exist in this way.

Barbara M., Co-Founder

Dr. Dori Gatter is a Psychotherapist, Founder Coach and Relationship Expert for over 20 years. She helps business partners upgrade their relationships and businesses. She leads retreats and workshops nationally, is a speaker and has co-authored two books. Her work has been featured on NBC, ABC, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Reader’s Digest, Men’s Health, Bustle and Shape Magazine and she has been voted in the top 10 Psychotherapists in her state.